


Tante

by pipperkipper



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Angst, Minor Character Death, Offscreen character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 20:49:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16145243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipperkipper/pseuds/pipperkipper
Summary: It is not grief that consumes her, or sorrow or anything else. It is numbness, smooth and hollow.Or, comprehending death is a process.





	Tante

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Six of Crows or any of the characters.

Jesper’s waiting for her when the _Wraith_ sails into berth twenty-two. Fear rips through Inej’s stomach, low and violent, and she has to force herself to breathe. Nobody’s ever met her at the harbor before; they all know that she’ll show up when she wants to, that she’ll slip into her spot with them like she’d never left at all. If he’s meeting her here, she can only imagine the terrible things that may have happened.

“What business?” The ways of the city are still ingrained in her, as if they were embedded in the Menagerie tattoo and never fully removed. Inej doesn’t mind. Right now, all she can think is _Wylan_ , _Nina_ , _Kaz_.

“Nice to see you too,” Jesper says, smiling at her. It’s not the full, joyful smile he usually gives, and it slips quickly. “There was some… news, a couple weeks ago,” the words come out stilted, uncomfortable, “and we weren’t sure how you’d handle it. But Kaz wanted you to hear it from a friend first.”

 _Wylan, Nina, not Kaz._ A small bit of relief blossoms in her chest.

“Tell me.”

The sharpshooter regards her warily before sighing and murmuring, “Heleen passed away.”

Something creeps through Inej, slow and dark, like a snake in a garden. It isn’t devastation or even sadness but it is something similar, something sideways of those feelings. Unhappiness, maybe, perhaps even despair. Even in her wildest dreams, Inej hadn’t imagined herself upset at hearing this news. When she’d been in the Menagerie, she’d imagined her joy at hearing these words, at the sense of freedom and peace they’d bring her life. She’d wanted Tante Heleen to die every day, known that the Saints wouldn’t approve these thoughts but cultivated them anyway.

And yet, hearing the words crumbles something inside of her. Her new purpose isn’t gone, but it feels like one of the cornerstones has been shattered and it’s now balancing precariously. Inej isn’t going to give up on it—it’s a dream she’s harbored for so long and now that it’s reality she feels like she’s doing something right with her life—but one of her main reasons is no longer alive. She’ll never be able to find Tante Heleen and brag about all the vile people she’s destroyed, will never be able to show Heleen proof that she’s going to destroy her just the same.

Kaz got to destroy Pekka Rollins brick by brick and he didn’t even believe in the Saints. Why couldn’t they let her do the same to Heleen?

 _You are not Kaz_ , she reminds herself, but the words fall flat. She knows she’s not Kaz, but she still wishes she’d been given the same opportunity. She’d gone through hell time and time again, and the one person she’d wanted to see shattered and destroyed, she hadn’t been the one to do it. Time and fate had gotten to her before Inej could.

She doesn’t notice she’s had her hand clamped around where the Menagerie tattoo once was until Jesper forces her to free her wrist and all that’s left is the bruise of her hand and the bumps that never fully faded.

* * *

Kaz is sitting at the desk in his new office when Inej storms in. She doesn’t bother slipping through the window or knocking on the door—she isn’t the first person to barge into his office and she won’t be the last. Kaz, to his credit, doesn’t even look up, as if he’d sensed the approaching anger but hadn’t sensed her beneath it. Instead, he asks, in a thin voice, “What business?”

“What business?” Inej snarls, gaining Kaz’s attention. He looks up, relief and something akin to delight passing through his eyes before it’s concealed behind observation and calculation as he takes in her anger. “You didn’t tell me Heleen died.”

“It’s rather hard to send you letters,” he says, refocusing on his paperwork as if she weren’t there at all. “And technically, I did.”

“Jesper isn’t you.”

“He’s a Dreg.”

“That’s not the same, Kaz,” Inej says, pacing like a captured cat. She’d like to run a hole into the carpet, the floor, the earth below. Keep pacing down, down, down, until she was face to face with Heleen’s vile spirit. “You should’ve been there to tell me this, or told Jesper you wanted to speak to me so that I’d come here first. But _you_ should’ve been the one to tell me.”

The office is quiet for a long, stuttering moment. There’s blood slamming in her ears and her heart is racing in her chest, livid and bitter and hurt. She and Kaz have never and will never properly fit into boxes, but there is something between them that resembles entwined souls. They don’t belong to each other in the way that some couples do, and calling them a couple is a gross misrepresentation of what they are. They’re individuals who’ve been sewn together with past and trust and blood, and even if they don’t owe each other anything, there are still things they do for each other, things that nobody else can take.

Kaz narrows his eyes. Inej nearly rolls her own.

“It isn’t that important,” he says at last, the tension between them threatening to start a fire, “who tells you and who doesn’t. Heleen is dead. Someone new will Menagerie and we’re all competing. Business as usual.”

“Business as usual,” Inej mimics, her eyes tightening. Her chest squeezes painfully, wrapped in a vice grip. Inej almost spares a glance for Nina, but Nina is not here, nor would she use her powers against Inej so cruelly.

Cruelty is Kaz’s specialty, though.

She leaves the way she came in, and makes sure to slam the door especially hard.

* * *

It isn’t hard for Inej to find Heleen’s grave. She wishes it were.

The plot is small, the headstone unremarkable. The first time Inej had passed through, she’d missed it. She’d been expecting something grandiose, with the girls’ insignias carved into it.

She’d been expecting her own insignia to be staring back at her.

But Heleen’s grave is simple. The Menagerie tattoo is the only indication that it belongs to her, and it’s fitting, in an odd way. Heleen had tattooed her mark onto many girls over the years. It was only fitting her final mark be on the world.

Little lynx. She could still hear Heleen’s voice curl around the name. A name Inej would never have to hear again, never had to think about if she didn’t want to. The name was gone, buried with the woman below her. She was the Wraith, the Captain of the Wraith, the Slave Freer. She was Inej Ghafa.

But not here.

Even when she was truly, undeniably above Heleen, she was nothing more than her name.

Little lynx, little lynx, little lynx.

* * *

Wylan’s playing piano when Inej slips into the room. She doesn’t say anything to warn him of her presence, just slips onto the bench beside him. Wylan jumps, his fingers leaping off the keys and creating an unpleasant sound in an otherwise lovely melody. Inej nods her head at the piano, silently asking him to continue.

He obliges.

They sit side by side, the piano the only disruption in the stillness.

Inej doesn’t keep track of the minutes or how many songs they go through. She turns the pages when Wylan nudges her, selects a booklet at random when they’re at the end. Wylan plays without pause, his eyes never leaving the notes.

He does not ask if she is okay or if she wants to talk, something Inej is grateful for. She knows that he knows the answer to both.

They sit on the bench, and Wylan does not pause when Inej leans her head against his shoulder.

* * *

Inej ultimately decides to sleep in her cabin on the _Wraith_ when the thought of staying with Wylan, Jesper, and Nina fills her with too much guilt. Staying with Kaz isn’t an option, no matter how long they’ve been apart. As she walks back to her ship, she considers assembling the rest of the crew and telling them they’re leaving immediately. They’d probably be upset by that, but they were good, dedicated men who wouldn’t ask questions or disobey orders.

Leaving would give her time to think. It would give her the chance to hunt a slaver or three and end their careers and lives. It would give her an outlet for her anger.

It would give her a valid reason to kick Kaz Brekker out of her cabin.

Something warm and gentle blossoms in Inej’s chest when she sees Kaz lying—sleeping?—on her bunk. How many times had she dreamed something like this? Him with her on the _Wraith_ , tucked together on her tiny bed, comfortable and content. Or her in the Crow Club, lying on his bed with him beside her, their hands wrapped together and their faces close.

But Inej is a crow, and a crow remembers. Remembers his callousness and his longstanding indifference. She slams the door, scaring away the warm feeling and startling Kaz awake.

“What business?” Inej asks quietly, calmly. She’s changed since her days in the Dregs, but slipping into her old persona is a remarkably easy feat.

Kaz glances at her before shifting and closing his eyes once more. He shrugs.

Inej scoffs. “What business, Brekker?”

Another shrug.

Anger pulls at her again, but it doesn’t last. It’s there and gone, leaving behind a hollowness in her chest that she hadn’t realized had been growing all day.

Inej was not above killing men when the cause was just. Slavers deserved death for the lives they ruined. Somewhere along the way, she’d claimed Heleen’s death for herself, the way Kaz had claimed Pekka Rollins’. But Death had taken her first, had decided it was time, that she’d done enough damage. It did not care about Inej’s feelings or her unspoken claim. It did not care if any other girls in the Menagerie had claimed Heleen’s life be theirs to take.

Perhaps that was for the better. Perhaps it wasn’t. But it didn’t change that she was gone. Being angry with Death would only hurt her more down the road. It is not grief that consumes her, or sorrow or anything else. It is numbness, smooth and hollow.

“Kaz,” she says, “Kaz, she’s gone.”

On the cot, Kaz sits up, tapping the spot next to him. He doesn’t say a word, just watches as Inej crosses the room and slides into the spot beside him, the spot that’s been carved out of the fabric of life just for her. And when he offers his hand to her, uncovered and open, she takes it.

They sit in the silence, and it is enough.


End file.
